Mice

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. .

Mouse

• I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek.
  That hath but oon hole for to sterte to.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Paraphrase of the Prologue of The Wyves Tale of Bath, line 572.

• The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum. Plautus, Trunculentus, IV.

• It had need to bee
  A wylie mouse that should breed in the cat's eare.
  • John Heywood, Proverbs, Part II, Chapter V.

• "Once on a time there was a mouse," quoth she,
  "Who sick of worldly tears and laughter, grew
  Enamoured of a sainted privacy;
  To all terrestrial things he bade adieu,
  And entered, far from mouse, or cat, or man,
  A thick-walled cheese, the best of Parmesan."
  • Lorenzo Pignotti, The Mouse Turned Hermit.

• When a building is about to fall down all the mice desert it.
  • Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book VIII, Section CIII.

• The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole,
  Can never be a mouse of any soul.
  • Alexander Pope, The Wife of Bath, Her Prologue, line 298.

• The mouse ne'er shunn'd the cat as they did budge
  From rascals worse than they.
  • William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act I, scene 6, line 44.